Why We Build the Wall: China's Ghost Cities

After my (to me) traumatic Traditional Chinese Medicine experience, I decided to zone out a bit on the bus by listening to some music. With the iPod on shuffle, the song, “Why We Build The Wall,” from Anais Mitchell's folk opera, Hades Town came on. If you've never heard this dark, strange, and haunting song, you should check it out. (And don't think of me as a total weirdo for really liking it. It's a song that says a lot without saying a lot.) Anyway, in this song, Greg Brown sings the part of Hades with his deep and rumbling voice, and he and the chorus sing about building a wall to keep themselves free down there in the Underworld. Here are some of the lyrics:

How does the wall keep us free, my children, my children?

How does the wall keep us free?

How does the wall keep us free?

The wall keeps out the enemy,

and we build the wall to keep us free.

That's why we build the wall.

We build the wall to keep us free.

Who do we call the enemy, my children, my children?

Who do we call the enemy?

Who do we call the enemy?

The enemy is poverty,

and the wall keeps out the enemy,

and we build the wall to keep us free.

That's why we build the wall.

We build the wall to keep us free.

You really have to hear it to get the full effect. Anyway, I was listening to this song as we drove past mile after mile of these skeletal high rise buildings. You may have read in the paper about China's new initiative to move millions more people out of the western countrysides and into the cities. In order to do this, they need to have cities for the people to move into, so they are literally building the cities before anybody moves there. It's so different than how any other city has ever evolved! On the bullet train (top speed: 308 k/h) we passed through a huge city of unfinished highrises and cranes. They had a train station, and roads, but it looked like no one but construction workers actually lived in the cities. The same is true around Xi'an. There is so much construction!

If you're interested, my colleagues told me that there is an interesting PBS program called The Ghost Cities of China, or something like that. I think it might be a Vice program. I plan to watch it when I get home...PBS party at my house in August!

I don't have any great photos of these buildings, but I'll post what I have here.

Thoughts? Please feel free to comment, it lets me know people are actually reading!!